


Not A Day Goes By

by gutsandglitter



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Gen, Post-Reichenbach, Songfic, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-19
Updated: 2012-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:45:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsandglitter/pseuds/gutsandglitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic, based on Stephen Sondheim's "Not a Day Goes By". John's thoughts post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not A Day Goes By

_Not a day goes by…_

His tremors were back with a vengeance. The day of the funeral he was shaking so badly that he had to ask Anderson to fill in for him as a pall bearer. Sherlock would have hated that. John wished Sherlock was there to complain, to hurl degradations at the man.  
John wished Sherlock was there.

 _Not a single day…_

Intermittent tremors in his hands, Regular therapist appointments, and no girlfriend – he was basically right back where he had started, the day he had run into Mike Stamford eighteen months before.

 _But you’re somehow a part of my life._

Damn him. Damn that mad, bloody impossible man. The one time he didn’t fight for the last word, the one time his cleverness really could have come in handy, he decided to go placidly. He decided to throw himself off a Goddamned rooftop in front of John’s very eyes.

 _And it looks like you’ll stay…_

Blessedly, John’s body had taken pity on him and knocked him unconscious. He didn’t really remember anything after seeing him step off the roof, although the doctors at St. Bart’s had told him he was a bit of a mess. He didn’t remember the body but he couldn’t forget the image of Sherlock against the dove gray sky, coat billowing in the breeze. He had looked like some sort of hero out of a comic book.

 _As the days go by, I keep thinking when will it end?_  
Then again, Sherlock had told John he wasn’t a hero. He told him that from the very start. John hadn’t believed him. He had brushed it off as some out-of-character modesty, continued to be amazed by Sherlock’s deductions like a four year old at a magic show. Maybe it all had been a trick. Maybe John had just been too stupid to see the strings, the mirrors, the man behind the curtain.

 _Where’s the day I’ll have started forgetting?_

No.  
NO.  
Whatever Lestrade had thought, whatever the papers said, whatever Harry kept pleading him to understand – none of it was true. Words like “hero” or “fraud” could never sum up Sherlock Holmes, they were far too simple. All the pages of John’s blog, a collegiate thesis, and a War and Peace-sized novel put together couldn’t come close to adequately describing whatever Sherlock Holmes was. After that day, people would come up to John and ask him for the “real story, beg him to tell them just who Sherlock Holmes really was. John gave all these people the same simple answer: “He was my best friend.”

 _But I just go on thinking and sweating and cursing and crying and turning and reaching and waking and dying and oh - not a day goes by. Not a blessed day. But you’re still somehow part of my life and you won’t go away, so there’s hell to pay. And until I die, I’ll die day after day after day after day after day after day after day ‘til the days go by…_

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, if you're not familiar with this song, I don't blame you. It's from a lesser-known musical called Merrily We Roll Along. For a great concert performance of the song itself, check out this video. http://youtu.be/5kMlQgyz834


End file.
